“Moondust,” Episode 3 Season 3 in Netflix’s television series The Crown, portrays a slice of Queen Elizabeth II’s husband’s life. In it Prince Philip is suffering from middle-aged malaise, complicated by the extreme restraints placed on him as a royal. In another life he would have gone further in his military career, perhaps becoming an astronaut.

We see him living up to his duties by giving enumerable speeches and presentations at various businesses and civic organizations. Outwardly he is a gracious representative of the British monarchy, the epitome of spit and polish. Inwardly he is lost in a near Walter Mitty fantasy stimulated by his very close attention to U.S. astronauts walking on the moon. He longs to be in a role that allows him to test his limits and to be an individual.

At his insistence he is given a private audience with the three astronauts who completed the moon walk achieving “one small step for man and a one giant step for mankind.” He prepares by spreading many newspaper articles across his desk and by reviewing television reports.

He uses his fountain pen to carefully compose salient points and derive questions for the space explorers. He works the way a Supreme Court Judge does to see into what to ask that is most important. He distills the wild fluid that has been boiling through his mind in recent months.

Ushered into the presence of Prince Philip at Windsor Castle, the astronauts sit quietly waiting to answer his questions. They are deep, philosophical questions that have been boiled out of all that he has read, all that he has thought about in regard to to the giant step for mankind.

The moon visitors’ answers are short, unsatisfactory and not at all what he expected until the astronauts begin talking at once finishing each other’s sentences about what they really did: pay attention to their checklists. They had no time to think in the moment. They carried out their tasks in a diligent way not unlike what Prince Philip does as a representative of the British Crown. The wonder and excitement was mostly for the earthbound.

The space explorers became even more animated when they were granted questions of their own for the would-be King of England. They gushed about the number of rooms and the immensity of the palace. A schoolboy buzz of excitement rose as they questioned the questioner about his fantastical existence.

Just before they started their royal gushing, Prince Philip’s face showed what he as a thoughtful middle-aged man understood that they did not: his age and thoughtfulness had allowed him to distill the essence of their out-of-this world tour that their younger selves had not come to realize.

His maturity allowed him wisdom that their younger years were a decade or more away from. He had an epiphany based on the old saw “youth is wasted on the young.” Wasted is not quite right; unobserved in the moment is better.

As portrayed in the program, from that time on Prince Philip was more at ease with himself. He was old enough to understand something that gives him contentment: action is just that and largely separate from examination and understanding in the moment.

What I like about his seeing into wonder of space exploration is key to my own contentment with who and where I am in my life. Out of the tumult of the action of my younger more active life, I am old enough to observe myself in time. I know myself.

I, too, still crave action but I know that understanding comes later through the work of active reflection.